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Eve M. Kerrigan 8068 words

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The Young Americans

By Eve M. Kerrigan

“What is blacker than a Raven?” “There is Death.”

-J.F. Campbell. Popular Tales of West Highlands: Vol III . 1890

“Mama, tell it again!”

Jan and Blanka were snuggled together in the little bed and Mama sat at the foot. She made a shadow

puppet on the wall with her hands in the shape of a black bird. She had removed the shade from the

lamp and the bird's fingered wings fluttered and were made large by the bare lightbulb.

“Ok. Once more, moi kochani. Siedem Wron...'” She began with a grave and spooky tone. “Pewnego

razu...” she continued.

1 Eve M. Kerrigan/Blackbirds

“No Mama. In English!” Blanka was an All American Girl already at age 11. Jan was still young

enough that he didn't mind listening to the stories in Polish but Blanka insisted: English.

Mama sighed and ruffled her son's white blonde hair, continuing in English.

“Ok! So... The Seven Crows.

' Once upon a time there was, far away amid high mountains, a green valley.

The valley was crossed by a clear stream and a woodsman had built his stone

house on its shore.

The woodsman was married and had seven sons and one daughter. He often had

to travel from home to work and his wife had a hard time bringing up the

children alone. The daughter did not cause her any trouble because she was

kind, pretty and helpful. But the boys were the cause of her problems because

they were rude, disobedient and quarrelsome.' ”

The Seven Crows was the one story that Blanka and her brother agreed on. They were only two years

apart but Blanka had no interest in the baby stories Jan normally liked. But, neither of them ever got

tired of hearing The Seven Crows . Mama loved to tell them the story and then after, frowning and

pointing her finger at them, she would warn them to remember what happened to bad little children!

Jan would nod, eyes wide with concern, but Blanka laughed at this. She would say “Mama! Jan is too

sweet to ever become a crow like those boys. And I am the pretty and helpful daughter!” Mama would

shake her head and kiss them each goodnight then, shooing Blanka off to her own bed.

Most days, when they came home from school, Jan and Blanka would do their homework and Blanka

would help her mother with dinner. After they ate, Papa would go downstairs to the coffee shop her

family owned to close up shop for the night and Jan and Blanka would climb into Jan's twin bed so


Mama could tell them the story again. Blanka would play with her younger brother's soft hair and

listen.

This was the routine. They did this many, many times over the years, until, one day, they stopped.

They stopped, because Jan was gone. He disappeared one gloomy afternoon. Blanka couldn't remember

the details. The police. Neighbors. Everyone waiting for news – good or bad. Other, similar

disappearances were mentioned in hushed voices when Blanka was supposed to be asleep. No one

knew what became of Jan.

One afternoon became days, and weeks. And then weeks turned into months and eventually years. The

family's initial terror turned to grief and anguish. And, finally, that once acute feeling hardened into a

cloying combination of hurt, resignation and regret which settled like a film on everything in the house,

everything in their lives.

Blanka and her parents loved each other and this was a saving grace. If anything, the disappearance of

her brother made mama and papa even more protective of, and dependent on, Blanka. Life went on, of

course. But always there was a thick atmosphere of pain that they all swam about in as they went

through their daily lives. Blanka missed her sweet little brother terribly. She would close her eyes and

imagine the feeling of his soft, fine hair.

The one thing that formed a crack through which the light could shine into Blanka's life was her

drawing, her artwork. The years passed and she drew. Seven years went by and seasons came and went

and Blanka grew up. Her art was the one shred of whimsy that remained in Blanka from the little girl

she had been now that she was all responsibility and maturity.

Blanka never liked to go under the bridge. Whenever she returned home from the city, she preferred to


take the L train into hipster-infested Williamsburg with its trendy bars, tattoo parlors and boutiques.

From there she would head up Manhattan Avenue to her parent's apartment above the family coffee

shop.

But sometimes, on a night like tonight, she found herself in Times Square and knew she would not

make curfew if she took the train all the way down to Union Square. So, she opted for the 7 train to

Queens. From there, she would walk from one borough to another, over the Pulaski bridge and beneath

the winking gaze of the Manhattan lights. Once past the toxic waters of the New Town Creek, two dark

flights of stairs waited to take pedestrians away from mainstream America and down to the

immersively Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

It was this final descent that she hated. There were about five blocks of industrial wasteland, ill-lit and

ominous, before the residential area began. It was here that, even if no one was around, Blanka could

almost feel eyes boring into her. A creeping sensation climbed the back of her neck toward her hairline.

She sped her step, fighting the urge to break into a run.

Each time she made this journey, her boot soles clanging noisily against the metal steps, a vague

memory burbled through the black tar of her unconscious.

What was this memory? She searched her mind (but not too hard!) and grasped fleeting images of a

boy, blond like herself. A sweet and pale face. A fright. She heard the beating of wings echoing in her

head. She saw a blot of darkness across a pale face.

She shook her head to erase these images as if obliterating a drawing on an Etch-a-sketch. She was

almost out of the shadow of the bridge. Amber street lights shined up ahead promising the warmth of a

more populated area.


Blanka turned away from the corridor old warehouses and breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn't even

realized she was holding her breath.

Once home, Blanka took her shoes off outside the apartment door and placed them neatly beside her

father's. She smiled. His work shoes looked like cinderblocks next to her mother's tiny winter boots.

She let herself in and turned to slide the bolts into place behind her. A voice startled her “Czesc

Blaniczka” She jumped and rolled her eyes before saying “Czesc Mamusia. Jak sie masz?” Of course

her mother would be waiting up. Her father imposed the curfew, but her mother was the enforcer.

Her mother responded “zamartwiałam sie na smirec!”

Blanka switched to English. “Worried, Mama? Really? Am I late? I told you I would be home by

curfew. I'm early! It's not even 11. I am going to be 18 in 2 months! I am not a baby. Besides, when am

I ever late?”

“Calm down girl! Your father and I just worry about you, that's all. Why you have to go into city to be

with your friends? Who are these friends? You go to art gallery in what part of town? I worry...”

Blanka's mother stroked the locket around her neck and Blanka's hand instinctively rose to the

matching necklace she wore.

Blanka knew her mother was thinking of Jan. Blanka remembered so little of her brother. He was 9 and

she was 11 when he disappeared. It wasn't so long ago, and yet her memories of him were terribly

vague. The specter of a pale face flashed through her mind.

She felt guilty all of a sudden. She kissed her mother on the cheek. Her mother patted her blond hair

and searched her face for something to fuss over. “Are you hungry? I made Pierogie. Potato, your

favorite. Don't worry, no meat!! Crazy vegetarian..”

Blanka laughed. It mystified her parents that she didn't eat meat. Actually, pretty much everything she


did mystified her parents.

Blanka's mother and father were old-fashioned, Polish to the core. They had come to New York to get

away from communism and to make their fortune as so many Eastern Bloc refugees had. Yet, here they

were in a little Poland. They had, as Blanka saw it, Ghettoized themselves, preferring to recreate some

version of the place they had left, minus the blandly oppressive government. They loved America, they

said, because they could be business owners and could own property. But to Blanka, what they loved

was the past. They mourned the loss of a Poland they could never have back because it had only ever

existed in their minds.

After her late dinner, Blanka went to bed, exhausted, only to wake up again when it was still pitch

black outside. She'd been dreaming. She got out her sketch pad and some pastels and drew an image

from her head. A bird, large and sleek with the long beak and small eyes of a crow but covered with the

soft flaxen hair of a baby, an eye like a polished lapis shining out. Once she finished the drawing she

shuddered and closed it in an old atlas at the bottom of her bookshelf and set about getting ready for

work. The sun was rising.

Blanka was aware that US born, non-Polish, hipster boys loved the coffee shop because of the

predominantly blonde, pretty Polish-American girls that worked there. It didn't hurt (or help, depending

on how you looked at it) that the uniforms the girls wore were sort of throwback, 1970s polyester red

and pink dresses that ended mid-thigh. This always struck her as a little odd because her father was so

protective but she understood that he also had some less than evolved attitudes toward women that had

most likely calcified in the era that manufactured these uniforms.

Either way, Blanka was no stranger to the advances of the locals, Polish and non-Polish alike so when

Franco sat at the U-shaped counter and ordered a plate of pierogie and a cup of the terrible coffee they

served in paper cups set into orange plastic holders, she simply ignored his lingering stare and put in


his order.

Two hours later he still sat in the same place staring at her. She noticed then that this stalker had one

blue eye and one green. Interesting, she thought for a moment but she marched up and told him he

needed to order something or leave. He ordered another terrible cup of coffee and a brightly frosted

donut.

He finished this new snack and commenced staring. Finally, Blanka marched over and said “Are you

enjoying the show? If you are finished, here is your check. Please go.”

Unfazed by her obvious irritation, he simply said “I'm Franco.” Then he paid his check and left.

The next day, Franco and his two-tone eyes returned to the u-shaped counter. Blanka sighed and

stepped over to take his order. This time, he handed her a small bouquet of asters wrapped in a square

of paper which, when she looked closely, she saw was a drawing. She opened it up and saw it was a

very fine rendering of her, in her uniform, standing at the u-shaped counter, presiding over the case of

donuts.

“This is why I was staring at you yesterday. I had to get your face, your features. I draw from memory

and I didn't want to forget anything.”

“This is good” Blanka told him. “Do you study art?” She tried not to be disarmed by the gesture but she

couldn't help herself and when he asked her “are you off tomorrow? Can I show you something?” she

surprised herself by saying yes.

They met in the city at the train station near The Met. What followed was a lovely day like Blanka had

not had before. The something Franco wanted to show her was not, as Blanka had suspected, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art or one of the other major New York museums, which she would have

found a little predictable, but rather a museum that was not a museum.


He took her to the very shi-shi Carlyle hotel in the ever shi-shi Upper West Side and led her through a

maze of lobbies and anterooms to a smallish lounge.

It was a pretty room, warm and golden with parchment colored walls covered in paintings. When

Blanka looked more closely, she saw the paintings were murals out of the children's book Madeline.

Once her brother was gone, Blanka's mother had stopped telling the old bedtime stories. But Blanka

couldn't sleep at night unless she had some magic in her mind, so she would draw pictures and read one

of the children's books she had borrowed from the library. Despite her earlier disdain for what she

thought of as baby stories, Blanka found herself newly enamored of children's literature. Madeline was

a favorite and one of the books she'd enjoyed again and again. She loved the stories about the little

French girl's adventures and the mischief she got into.

The Author and artist, Ludvig Bemelmans' style had influenced Blanka's own artwork. She particularly

strove to combine old fashioned simplicity and figurative elegance with a childlike tone in her drawing.

This was a combination that Bemelmans had bewitched her with. How had she never been here before?

Who was this guy? How had he known to take her here?

By the time the train deposited Blanka and Franco in times square following their date, Blanka realized

they would have to go the Long Island City route in order for her to get home by curfew. She and

Franco were so deep in conversation by the time they crossed the bridge into Brooklyn that she forgot

to be worried about the steps. It was a sudden darkness that fell like a fog rolling in just as they were

approaching the metal stairwell that reminded her.

The streetlights were momentarily blotted and there was a cacophony of harsh cawing. A murder of

crows was flying over. Blanka's old dread burbled up and she got quiet. She remembered a rhyme from

her childhood “just then flew down a monstrous crow, As black as a tar-barrel which frightened both

the heroes so, they quite forgot their quarrel.”


Franco didn't seem to notice the change and chattered on happily as they clanged down the steps but, as

they rounded the landing he, too fell silent at the appearance of a trio of burly, blond boys loitering

there.

Boys. Men. Blanka wasn't exactly sure. These guys had the bulky, muscled bodies of imposing men but

retained a childish simplicity, a youthful arrogance. The combination was alarming. They seemed to

her like giant, violent toddlers.

There was actually a fourth in their company, this one slighter, tow-headed and standing deep in the

shadows. He was in their group and yet not of it. Blanka was momentarily distracted by his presence.

She squinted toward him, trying to make him out... And then she turned her attention to more pressing

matters.

Blanka instinctively understood in the way that young girls moving through a world of males

understand that these boys meant her harm. She also understood that she would have to run the gauntlet

of these meat heads without fear if she was to walk away intact. She hoped Franco understood this as

well because to turn to him, to appeal to him at all would be to invite attack. She took one hard, direct

look at each potential assailant as she passed him, nodding and then dropping her gaze as she continued

down to the street below. Franco was behind her, she could feel him there, but he was silent.

Then these boys began calling out vulgar things after her; threatening things. things intended to incite anger in Franco as much as fear in her. But Franco said nothing, thank God. They were almost to the bottom of the steps when Blanka stopped suddenly. The indistinct features of the boy in the shadows came back to her in a flash and she was suddenly reminded of the dream of the odd, blond-haired bird. She stood lost in a thought for a brief moment until she heard Franco right behind her whispering, his voice low but urgent “Blanca. go.”

And then boots came clambering down the steps after them and she was really afraid. She sprinted

down the steps toward the street below. She was nearly there when out of nowhere, a boot – though she

never saw anyone attached to it --- swiped at her ankle and she fell to the bottom of the remaining


steps, the corrugated steel beating her flesh, her joints twisting beneath her. Had one of those guys

tripped her?! Where did he come from? Her senses were muted by the pain and shock of the fall.

She heard Franco yell and saw a blur of him attacking the largest, scariest bully before she blacked out.

When she came to, her skirt was ripped, her ankle swollen and her arm horribly bruised. She looked

around and found Franco sitting beside her, his face beaten badly. They were alone, so she cried, as

much in relief as upset. Franco helped Blanka to her feet and they limped together down the road in

silence.

Every night for the next week Blanka woke up in the middle of the night horrified to discover herself

standing in the very spot where she and Franco were attacked. She would wake with a start and

discover herself barefoot and freezing in her nightgown, standing on desolate Box Street. After

running home barefoot and creeping back into her bed, she could not sleep another wink. So, every

night for a the next week, Blanka stayed up and drew. Pictures of thugs. Pictures of crows. A shadowy

image of a young man. But mostly, she drew pictures of Franco. She couldn't stop thinking about him,

their date at Bemelmans Bar, him fighting, his face after the brawl.

On the fifth night, when she woke standing on Box street, a black bird was perched on her shoulder as

though she were a scarecrow or a statue of St. Francis. Frozen, she stared as the creature fixed its

glittering eye on her. After a minute, it flew off and so did she.

Franco didn't come to the coffee shop that week. Blanka knew it was partly because of his injuries but

also she thought it was because of the way her parents had reacted when they saw her that night. It

wasn't Franco's fault. She tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen. They were convinced he had put

her in harm's way. He was no good. Never mind his own beaten face. Besides, he wasn't Polish. She

tried to tell them the boys who had done this to her were Polish. They wouldn't listen.


But there was something else, even, that kept Franco away. He didn't come in, Blanka thought, because he was afraid. Not of her father, but of seeing her, or of... something... She didn't know what, exactly. Maybe the truth about what had happened.

What had happened, Blanka wondered, not entirely sure herself. Why had the three (or four?) attackers

left them? Franco gave Blanka a very spotty account of what had occurred while she was unconscious.

She never asked him to fill in the blanks. Maybe he couldn't...or, didn't want to.

The flowers Franco had given her were dead in her room and Blanca stared at the drawing Franco had

given her trying to make sense of the pretty face she saw there as she looked at her own bruised face in

the mirror.

The next day and the day after, Franco still didn't come to the coffee shop. Blanka called him but never

got an answer. Before things got weird that night, she had invited him to go to an opening in the city

with her at the Ace gallery for an installation artist she loved. She called again and left him a message

with the details. She told him to meet her if he could. He never came.

On her way home that night, Blanka had the sense she was being followed. She'd used the L train to get

home. After what happened the last time, her mother made her promise not to take the 7 again. After

what happened the last time, it was amazing her parents even let her out of the house again... She

happily avoided the bridge to Queens.

Still, now here she was, creeped out, walking brightly lit Manhattan Avenue with a feeling of being

stalked. She was probably just traumatized. Each time she stopped and looked around, there were no

people looking her way, only the faces of two black birds. There were no suspicious figures lurking,

except for the two crows perched on a telephone wire, or then on a mailbox nearby. It seemed

ridiculous but were these birds following her? What an absurd notion... Blanka put it away and hustled

home. She breathed a sigh of relief as she entered her family's cozy apartment and smelled her mother's


cooking.

Later that night, Blanka again woke with a start but thankfully she was still in her own bed and not

standing under the bridge on Box Street. As she started to go back to sleep, she heard a noise like

pebbles against her window. Her first thought was Franco. He was pelting her window to wake her up.

But when she opened the curtain, nobody stood below.

Suddenly a bird flew into the glass, beating at it with its beak and scaring Blanka to death. She had to

stifle a scream. She had heard of birds killing themselves by flying into plate glass windows they

mistook for uninterrupted sky, but this was different. It was the middle of the night! This was a bird

pecking at her window like it was trying to get in! And this was no pigeon either. It was another crow.

What was it with all the crows lately?

Blanka stepped out to make sure she hadn't woken her parents with her muffled shriek. The apartment

suddenly felt stiflingly hot. She needed some air so she grabbed her father's big coat from the rack and

headed outside. Maybe she could shoo that crazy bird away and finally get some sleep.

She stood on the street and looked up at her bedroom window, warm with light. She had left her lamp

on but even by its light she couldn't spy the bird that had so insistently pecked at her window minutes

before. The cold air woke Blanka up and she no longer felt like going back to bed anyway. She began

walking down Manhattan Blvd in her nightgown and sneakers, wrapped in her father's coat.

A low cawing sound got her attention. She looked back and saw a crow perched on the awning above

the door of the coffee shop. She and the bird stared at each other for a moment and Blanka laughed an

awkward laugh. Why was she staring in this bird's eyes? Why the hell was it staring at her? And was

she losing her mind, or did this crow have blue eyes? or...maybe one blue and one green eye, like...?

That was just crazy. It was dark. How could she make out the color of a little bird's eyes?


“Were you the one making all that racket up there? You woke me up. Well...I wasn't really sleeping

yet... so I guess you didn't...”

For some reason a memory popped into her head just then of her mother, in her superstitious fashion,

telling her and Jan when they were very little that it was bad luck to kill a crow. Whatever could the

reason have been for her mother to tell them that?

“I don’t want to kill a crow.” She said out loud

“What's that Dziwka?” Blanka turned and started to see a group of men behind her. Where did they

come from? These were the same thugs that had cornered her and Franco on the stairs. All except for

one. The slight one who had kept to the shadows was missing.

Blanka began to shake. She looked around for a passerby or a car. The streetlights alone didn't provide

enough comfort for this. But there was no one around. The bustling street she grew up on was as quiet

as a farm road tonight. She wanted to run back into her building but the thugs were between her and the

door. The big one smiled a huge, cold grin that scared the shit out of Blanka.

She reached into her pocket, but all she could find was her father's enormous set of keys. She palmed

them, allowing the serrated edges of a handful of them to protrude between her knuckles.

The big one laughed when he saw her weapon and started toward her. Blanka lunged forward and

punched him with the keys square in his gigantic jaw. The move hurt her as much as it hurt him and put

her punching hand out of commission. One of the other guys spoke in Polish. “Hey Josef! Ty

pierdolona kurwo!” then they descended on her. One of them punched her in the face and she saw stars

as the keys slipped from her hand to the ground. Blanka had never experienced such blinding pain.

They shoved her past her own door toward a space behind the dumpster.

When she realized what was happening, she began to fight them again. She couldn't bear to have her


father find her there, bloodied and defiled later, or to think of her mother's heartbreak after what had

happened to Jan. She squirmed and wriggled and somehow slipped out of her father's large coat like

she was the Artful Dodger. She ran back to the keys sitting on the sidewalk in front of her door. As she

bent to retrieve them, a huge boot connected with her backside and forced her face first into the

pavement. She rolled over, her face bloody, her hand scraped and saw through her own blood, her

blond attacker looming over her, the sick smile still plastered to his now bruised face. He wanted to kill

her.

Then, amid a loud cawing, a crow came flying down and battered the thug about his face with its black

fingered wings. It pecked at his head. Blanka looked through her good eye and saw another crow doing

the same to another of the thugs. Two birds? She thought. What in the holy hell was happening? And

then she passed out.

When Blanka came to, She was still lying on the sidewalk in front of her door but the thugs were gone.

She got up carefully. Everything hurt. She picked up her keys and staggered over to where she had

slipped her father's jacket. As she put it back on, she caught some movement behind the dumpster.

When she went to inspect, she discovered a bird lying there. It was one of the crows that had...what?

Defended her? She saw right away that its wing was broken. Blanka sighed and picked the thing up,

cradling it to her chest inside her coat. Then she climbed the stairs to the apartment.

Once inside, Blanka found a shoebox and a towel to place the bird in and set about trying to deal with her swollen mess of a face. How was she going to explain this to her parents?

She fell asleep holding a bag of frozen peas to her eye and woke up with a trickling of freezer-burned

water down her cheek. As she stood up, she almost jumped out of her skin at the sight of a naked blond

man with a broken arm sleeping on the floor at the foot of her bed. Forget her battered face. There was

no explaining this to her mother and father!


“Holy shit.” she whispered, staring. She felt sure that this was the same blond boy she had seen that

night on the stairs with Franco, the one from the shadows, the one who had been missing from last

night's attack. She sat looking at the stranger for a long time, unsure of what to do, what to think. He

slept peacefully.

Suddenly Blanka had an odd impulse. Taking the dried asters Franco had given her off the dresser, she

wove them into a wreath, humming, as she worked, an old Polish song her mother used to sing to her.

Once finished, Blanka stood and placed the wreath on the sleeping boy's head. As she stood up, the

boy's eyes fluttered open. He stared into her eyes and finally said “Blanka.”

“...Jan?” She heard herself say after a moment. It was a question, and one Blanka had had for a very

long time. He was alive? Where had he been all this time? What had happened to him?

This was Blanka's brother. The little boy was no longer a boy and he was here in her room wearing a

wreath of asters (what had possessed her to do that?) and cradling a broken arm to his chest. A broken

arm which, when she looked closely, had several soft, downy blue-black feathers protruding from it.

She gaped in disbelief and he whispered her name again. And then they hugged for the first time in so

many years.

When they parted, eyes wet, Jan said, by way of explanation, “Franco too.”

Blanka stared for a moment confused about what her brother meant. And then the impossible truth

dawned on her. Jan's sudden appearance. The tiny feathers. The strangeness with the birds. Somehow

this thing that had happened to Jan had...what? Also happened to Franco? It made no sense at all and

yet it made all kinds of sense.


This was why Franco hadn't been around, why he didn't call. And the birds. All the damn birds she had

been seeing... Was one of them Franco? Jesus. Blanka's sort of boyfriend had become a...a...werebird?!

Blanka thought of her own odd behavior this morning, when she made the wreath. She had been

possessed of some need to do that. It reminded her of how she felt when she was drawing sometimes.

Or, what about the sleepwalking? What was the spell she had been under?

Blanka decided she needed to listen to whatever innate knowledge or instinct was telling her to do

these odd things. She didn't know how she knew to make the wreath for Jan but she knew it was

necessary and that doing it again would help Franco too.

But where to find asters? They weren't exactly the dinner party flower that you could just grab at the

nearest bodega.

Blanka went online, searched flower shops and Asters and Aster Delivery, etc. She wished she could

ask Franco where he got the asters he'd given her. She decided the best thing to do would be to visit the

Chelsea wholesale flower market. If there were asters in NY in March, they were bound to have them.

She fidgeted on the subway, the train carrying her so slowly to her destination. What if she was too

late? What would happen to Franco? Would he be killed somehow, or lost to her forever? She didn't

know the rules of this strange game she was playing.

The flower market came up empty. She wandered through the rows of rose, the aisles of perfumed,

brightly colored and manicured flora searching for the simple posies in cornflower blue and lavender

that she needed. She asked dozens of Asian & Latin florists and farmers and they all shook their heads

and arranged their great bunches of exotic orchids and austere calla lilies. Blanka gave up and headed

home by the 7, knowing it would be faster. She figured it was still early enough, light enough to be

safe.


As she descended the steps from the bridge she rounded the corner on a landing and thought she saw a

dark figure in the shadow of the bridges girder. The sight spooked her so that she jumped and then took

off running down the stairs, her bootlace catching on something and jerking her back so that she lost

her footing and again fell the length of the steps. When she caught her breath and began to rouse

herself, she felt a sticky wetness on her lip and tasted a metallic, salty flavor. Blood. She looked down

at the dirt and saw a small puddle of her own dark blood there. She could already feel her nose

swelling. Dammit. Would her face ever look normal again?

Blanka stumbled the rest of the way home, applying pressure to her nose with her sleeve, ignoring the

horrified looks of passersby. Once upstairs, she went into her room grateful that her parents were

working.

Her brother was sleeping again, wearing sweat pants and a t shirt she had given him. Evidently being a

bird was exhausting. Well, so was taking a beating like a prize fighter. She sighed raggedly as she took

the bag of peas back out of the freezer and placed it on her nose while she tried to figure out what to do

next. She reluctantly looked at her reflection to assess the damage and noticed the locket her mother

had given her, the one she always wore, was missing. Damn it. Under the bridge, she thought. It must

have fallen off when she fell. She sighed again holding the icy bag to the bridge of her definitely

broken nose. Blanka headed back the way she had come, steeling herself against specters in the

shadows. It was getting dark now.

She saw the glint of silver on the ground from a block away. She bent down to pick her necklace up and

as she rose and turned, Blanka saw her second impossible thing in 24 hours. Asters. They were growing

right in front of her amid the concrete and grime of the city.

They were growing, she realized, from the exact spot where her blood had pooled at the foot of the

stairs just 20 minutes before. Asters.


So, of course, she picked them. These Asters were obviously here for her. And then, as if in a trance,

she began to hum the Polish song she'd sung while making Jan's wreath and Blanka wove the blood

asters in to a second wreath for Franco.

When she was done, Blanka stood and walked, not toward home, but instead straight to the dark place

under the bridge holding her wreath. She didn't know what drew her that way. It was that strange

wisdom operating again. Her instincts had always told her to get away fast from this dark and creepy

place. She was afraid, she always supposed, of what lurked there. She assumed, though, that her fears

were grounded in base reality: rapists, crazy homeless people, junkies. She never suspected she would

enter that place willingly or do so in search of her lost friend, a magical bird/man. Yet, here she was.

She stopped and stood before a low girder by the stinking banks of the polluted creek which served as a

perch for a nest of vile crows, clotted in a sleeping huddle of black feathers. Crows or not, Blanka

recognized this gang by their menace. Blanka had found her band of thugs, only this time they weren't

overgrown blonde boys. She shuddered and approached quietly, discarding the ice pack she was still

holding and pocketing her necklace. She knew she must be careful not to wake the birds. There were so

many of them, at least 15. She had to select the correct one, the one that was Franco, to place the

wreath on.

Blanka knew the crow she was looking for had one green eye... but their eyes were all closed. How

could she tell him apart? Her newfound 'spidey sense' wisdom didn't help her to differentiate him from

the rest of these... creatures. Finally, she saw there was no way to avoid the inevitable.

Blanka felt around the dirty creek bank for a rock that was big enough. Then, taking as deep a breath

as she could manage through her swollen nose, she threw her rock into the heart of the tangle of oily

black crows. A terrible flurry of cawing rose up. All the birds flew upward from their perch like a gust

of foul wind had lifted them and they swarmed Blanka, pecking, flapping – all except one bird – a crow


with one green eye that moved restlessly along its perch, cawing loud, insistent distress signals.

Blanka wrapped one arm around her head and clutched the wreath to her chest with the other as she

fought through the storm of crows to get to Franco. Blanka didn't have the energy or time to be

surprised when a large raven appeared above and dove straight toward her. She could only shield her

ravaged face and wait for the blow she knew was coming. But instead if feeling the bird's sharp talons,

Blanka heard a voice calling out “Kruka!” The word stopped the raven mid-descent. Blanka's brother

Jan was standing near the place where the asters had grown and the massive black bird careened swiftly

toward him leaving just enough time for Blanka to rush through the last of the attacking crows and

throw the wreath around the head of the green eyed raven. She didn't have time to wait to see if

anything happened. She had to see if Jan was ok.

When she turned back to Jan, he was lying still on the ground. All the old feelings of grief and pain

welled up in Blanka's chest and she cried out wordlessly.

All at once, the cacophony of the birds died and every crow circled and landed silently beside Jan's

motionless figure. Blanka ran toward Jan but stopped in her tracks as she watched the huge raven land

and in a bizarre, morphing, rippling movement, become a naked black haired woman. Honestly, she

thought, what next? Then the former raven turned woman cried out as if in physical pain and just as

suddenly as she had appeared this way, flickered back to bird form again.

A voice behind Blanka said “it is bad luck to kill a crow.”

Franco! Blanka turned to stare at him, relief, confusion, despair all fighting for a place.

“Come on. Let's get him out of here. He needs help.” Franco grabbed Blanka's hand and they walked

toward Jan. This time, the birds, which had moments before been screeching their threats and buffeting

Blanka with their wings, just scattered to the winds.


The Raven was the last to take off. She screamed as she ascended and flew off over the bridge taking

all the malevolence of the place with her.

Franco carried Jan's lanky body the seven blocks to Blanka's. When he brought him up the flight of

stairs and into the apartment, Blanka said “Mami, call the doctor!” Blanka's mother came running in

and at the sight of Jan in Franco's arms, she went entirely pale.

Later, when she would talk about it, she would say she had thought for a moment that an Angel had

come to her. She never got over the sight of Franco, a wreath of flowers around his head, holding her

long lost son in his arms.

The doctor came and worked on Jan. He was all discretion as he inspected Jan's strange, beak-inflicted

wounds. He said nothing though he raised an eyebrow when he noticed small black feathers that

protruded from Jan's skin in places.

Jan had lost some blood but he was ok. The doctor set his arm properly and took, along with his

payment, one of Blanka's mother's homemade kołaczek. Then he left the family alone to sort through

the fantastic details of their reunion.

Later, when Blanka went back to the place where it all happened, she saw asters growing from the

place where Jan had laid. She recalled the moment she saw him there and thought he was dead, having

sacrificed himself for her and Franco. She couldn't believe he had come back to them only to be taken

again so soon.

But he wasn't dead. Jan was alive and at home. Franco was safe and the curse, or whatever it had been,

was lifted. And, under the bridge, there were no more crows, just families of plain old pigeons cooing

and shitting on everything.

Blanka asked Franco to explain it all to her. So much had happened. She wanted to make some kind of


sense of it all. He told her, “they were cursed, I was cursed. An act of violence brought it on each of us.

Kruka, the raven, she was the first, I guess. She carried the curse out ever after, like a carrier of a

disease. No one knows who cursed her, but if a young man hurt someone or committed a crime,

something violent, she would... take them. They would become one of her Murder of crows. Those

thugs that attacked us that time. They were crows, too. When I attacked the big one, Josef was his

name, she took me. We all were hers. But we could still be people, too. Only, it felt horrible to be

human. I was sick, tired all the time. My vision got bad. At first, I had a few hours every day when I

felt normal but then that time got shorter and shorter. I began to think I would never be human again.

Then you came under the bridge... ”

There was still too much to understand.

“But Jan... what did he do?”

“Kruka was lonely after so long of being under the curse. She saw Jan all those years ago when he

walked those steps with your mother and father and she decided she loved him, that she wanted him for

a pet. Jan was the only one that I know of who ever received the curse without doing anything to “earn”

it.

Blanka recalled a simple, happy time when her family had been together and whole, not long before

Jan disappeared. She saw them in her mind coming back from an errand in Queens to go to an

appliance store. Blanka had been proud to speak English to the clerk so her parents, whose accents

were thick and English was broken wouldn't have to. They all came back by the Pulaski Bridge, her

parents holding hands a pace ahead and she and Jan holding hands and swinging arms just behind. Her

father's good mood was enhanced by the purchase of a new walk-in refrigerator for the cafe and the

feeling was contagious. They seemed to travel that afternoon in a golden bubble of halcyon

contentment. They floated home in it. Was it then? Blanka wondered. Was that when this Kruka had


selected Jan? His golden hair glinting in the sun. His sweet, unassuming smile and easy laugh. Was this

blight of a creature also pulled into the contagion of her family's joy, the perfect apex of which was and

would always be Jan? Was this beast of dark intentions spying them all unawares? No one could ever

know, but the thought gave Blanka the shivers anyway.

“I guess his crime, as she saw it, was making her love him. When he saw you on the stairs with me that

night, he knew right away who you were. He abandoned Kruka for you and she resolved to kill him.

And you. But it all backfired. I think when she attacked him under the bridge, that final act of violence

earned her some kind of permanent transformation. The truth is, though, she was more bird, more

predator, than human anyway.”

Blanka considered this wild story. She would never know the why of it all. She would never understand

how these strange things were possible. She thought of her parents who upon learning all that had

happened simply nodded gravely and clucked compassionately. All of this magic and folklore and

strangeness was so archaic, so gothic, so...Polish.

“It's bad luck to kill a crow” was all Blanka had to say in the end.

Blanka's face finally healed. Jan's wounds healed too though he always had a few downy black feathers

near the elbow of the wing that had been broken when Blanka found him.

Blanka turned 18 and summer eventually came to New York with its usual oppressive heat and long

days. Blanka, Jan and Franco reveled in it, enjoying the last summer of their youth like normal,

American kids.

The Kruka... an epilogue

She flew and flew. She kept to the shadows, flying at night. She blended with the blackness.


Her vision was a gloomy blanket of penumbra broken only by the glitter and spark of that which

reflects light. The insistent gray of dusk wears on the eyes of the soul. A great fatigue sets in and the

mind goes to sleep. All that is left is the dusky self, the self without any brightness, the shadow.

This conquering shadow is why the crow seeks shiny objects, gems to line the nest. They have a drive

to reside within a glimmering reflection of the light they cannot see, cannot be. So was The Kruka.

In her human life, the girl she was had her natural radiance lost under tendrils of umbrage. This

darkness was cultivated and teased out, first by cruel circumstance and later it was worried into ever

greater existence by the workings of her own poisoned mind. Her consciousness became fixed on

stroking those small wisps of black smoke into something larger, like a hand engaged in a perverse

arrangement that wont leave off its exercise. It was this ugly singularity of focus that brought about the

darkness that enveloped her body and soul. A toxic tenacity clung to her ever after.

As the edges and advantages of this mutated spirit deepened from dusk to tar black, the girl, whoever

she had been, became a broken, angry thing. Not a girl or woman anymore at all, but a sort of harpy.

The girl became The Kruka, and The Kruka had no remembrance of the crimes she had committed that

led to her transformation, just of the punishments she had recieved. Already her human heart and spirit

were half gone and she was half wild by the day the curse finally came. It was little sacrifice, then, to

meet each subsequent day with the shadowy gaze of the raven. It seemed less like a curse and more like

a continuation of a half life she had lived for a long time.

But under it all, there was always a thirst for the glimmer, a fierce and rageful voracity that drew her to

whatever shined. Always, her small, black eyes darted around, seeking the luminous. She stole objects,

things, just as she always had. She feathered her nest with promise rings, wedding bands, the coins

from the eyes of the dead, golden teeth, bits of shattered, bad-luck mirrors, silver lockets, copper wire

and even a precious diamond or two.


But none of these treasures pleased her. She was lonely in her existence, shrouded from the light. She

sought company. She remembered a curious human word: family. This word caused a shimmering light

to fight the darkness in her mind's eye for an excruciating moment. Then, it obsessed her.

She began to gather those who were like her. She flew at night and saw damaged creatures that drew

the shine of the ruby from the veins of unwitting victims. She saw lonely souls snatching trinkets to fill

the holes in themselves. She saw angry ghosts of people, crushing others in their grip. And that word

echoed through her: family.

She found that she could whisper to the spirits of these sad, vengeful and dangerous beings and they

would come to her; they would become like her. She amassed her murder in this way. Around her

jeweled nest these doomed children would perch, cawing out their misery and doing her bidding.

Then, one day, a light caught her roving gaze. She hunted the sparkling thing so that she could bring it

to her lair and have a new distraction. She followed the light but she saw it was not a pretty locket or a

hat pin she sought. It was a boy with flaxen hair so bright it illuminated the air around him, it cut

through the tired fog of her sight. A boy like a sunbeam. She was arrested. She would have him.

She stole him from his bed in the blackest part of night. He slept like an angel as she carried him to her

nest. She laid him among the swag and it all dimmed in the aura of his sweet beacon.

The Kruka felt a stirring in her chest – something she vaguely remembered from her time as a girl. It

moved the sleeping spirit of a child within her. Just for a moment. Because then the blackest rage she

had ever felt overcame her like a tsunami and crushed the stirring under its pounding fist and a filthy

sensation replaced it. She knew, she would curse this blameless child. She moved her foul beak to his

perfect ear and whispered the thing to the sleeping boy's soul. She watched with horror and evil

satisfaction as his alabaster skin grew dark and his limbs changed shape.


The Kruka flew up and screeched a terrible song of anger and despair as the transformation completed

itself. Her small black eye wept a hard, glittering emerald tear for the soul she had imprisoned. The tiny

gem fell into the nest beside the fledgling who snatched it immediately in his small beak, seeking some

impossible warmth in it's light.

The Kruka came back down to the nest and settled there beside her newest acquisition, surveying her

cimmerian kingdom. Hundreds of crows gathered around her great roost, like the rotted fruit of a

diseased tree. She spread her wings, their enormous shadow encircling them in a shadowy embrace.

She tilted her head back and tried to use her human voice to speak that human word: family.

But an ungodly shrieking was all that came.

END


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